


let's make a start

by konshokoentaiko



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M, Post-The Raven King, Pre-Epilogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-02-22 08:17:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13162962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/konshokoentaiko/pseuds/konshokoentaiko
Summary: Ronan looked startled. He flushed.“You can kiss me whenever you want,” he muttered, after a moment. “Because we’re -- you know.”“We’re what?” said Adam.(in which Adam and Ronan attempt to Communicate)





	let's make a start

**Author's Note:**

  * For [intertwiningsouls](https://archiveofourown.org/users/intertwiningsouls/gifts).



> [written for the trc-exchange on tumblr]
> 
> hi i’m so so sorry for the extremely late upload!!! tbh this fic is mostly just my attempt to get a handle on the characters as it’s my first time writing them (and my first time writing anything in a while) but i hope you like it anyway. happy new year! <3

When the door slammed open and Ronan burst into the classroom early before the day’s finals started, Adam nearly knocked all his notes off his desk.

He scrambled for his papers, heart pounding with surprise and what was more than likely guilt. At this point, seeing Ronan Lynch at Aglionby was like something out of a fever dream -- and now he’d appeared just as Adam, who should have been cramming for his test, had found himself vaguely distracted by a half-formed, idyllic memory of kissing Ronan at the Barns.

Of course, things were never that easy.

His situation with Ronan right now was… complicated. It had never been particularly _not_ complicated, but now it was complicated in a way that made Adam feel bad for dwelling on it so much.

Like some kind of terrible cosmic joke, the happiness that Adam had finally allowed himself at the tentative new thing that had taken root between them had been interrupted by the hopeless tragedy that followed: Aurora and Noah and Cabeswater gone, and Gansey dragged back from death once more. Since then, they’d all been trying their best just to recover and pick up the pieces of their lives. While Adam was studying and picking up his jobs again, Ronan had moved back into the Barns and begun to mourn, in the quiet way he’d mourned Noah the first time around.

Then, Adam had protected Ronan’s privacy, allowing him to retreat into all-consuming grief. Now he quietly kissed away the wild lost look in Ronan’s eyes and asked him to stay nights at St. Agnes, where he did his work sitting near Ronan on the bed until Ronan fell asleep. But it never felt like enough. It never felt like enough when all Adam could really do was watch Ronan withdraw more and more into the Barns as the weeks went on, away from everyone. From him.

He hated it, and it was frustrating how misaligned they seemed to have become, especially now that they were… dating.

Maybe-dating. Well, making out regularly in Adam’s room.

God, Adam didn’t even know if they were dating.

“Parrish,” Ronan said now.

He was clearly in a terrible mood. That wasn’t a good sign. Adam tried to moderate his tone, searching for a neutral response, but his thought process was arrested as his eyes caught on the sweep of Ronan’s eyelashes, low and dark. Instead, what fell out of his mouth as he stared at Ronan was --

“You aren’t here for finals, are you?”

“Finals,” Ronan said blankly.

“It’s -- finals today,” said Adam. He wondered why he had assumed Ronan knew about finals. He wondered why he couldn’t have greeted Ronan with something normal. “Never mind. Ronan, you haven’t been in school for weeks --”

“God, is that all you can fucking think about?” Ronan rolled his eyes. “I don’t give a fuck about finals and no, I’m not going to spend all my time up here in this shithole, _Gansey_ \--”

“That’s not what I meant,” Adam said, exasperated. There were many things he thought about Ronan and staying in school, but he hadn’t even meant to bring it up. “I meant, why are you here now?”

“Never mind,” Ronan snapped. He was restless, shifting; his eyes were very bright. “Forget it. It doesn’t matter. Study for your fucking test.”

He turned to leave, and Adam grabbed his arm.

Ronan froze.

“ _Ronan_ ,” said Adam.

Ronan didn’t say anything, but he didn’t try to move, either. Adam sighed.

“Why are you here?”

“I’m bored,” Ronan said dismissively, though he seemed jarred by Adam’s hand around his wrist.

“Right.”

“It’s too fucking quiet around here. And I was around, so I thought I’d drop by, but it’s just as stuffy and terrible as I remembered.”

It was probably true, but it was also probably a partial truth, manipulated into just another jab at Adam instead. Adam hated when Ronan got like this, searching for any excuse to lash out and deflect so he wouldn’t show how he really felt.

He knew he should probably just let Ronan leave, when he was like this.

Unlike Gansey with his perpetual fussing, Adam’s philosophy with an angry, upset Ronan had never been to chase after him, trying to fix things for him. Ronan, he’d thought, clearly preferred to deal with it on his own -- Ronan, who used rage as weapon and defense, who shot back with barbed words at anyone who came close like a wounded animal. And Adam, burdened with his own problems, had wanted no part in it.

Now he did. He still had no interest in controlling Ronan, or keeping him in line. But he wanted to help, or at least, he didn’t want to just quit on Ronan when things got hard. This was Ronan at his most unreasonable, but if this was going to work, they had to be able to deal with this somehow.

Adam wanted to try for this. He wanted to be careful with this, even if it meant he had to work for it.

Adam let go of Ronan’s wrist. Tried to soften himself, taking the edge off his tone. He said, very carefully, “If there’s something wrong, you can tell me.”

It didn’t work. In a flash, Ronan was alight and angry again, as though Adam had flipped a switch. “There’s nothing _wrong_.”

“You’ve shut yourself up in the Barns for days," Adam burst out, unable to help himself. “You can’t just say that. Look, you don’t have to act like --”

Ronan sneered. “Yeah, sorry I can’t just pretend everything’s fine by sticking my head in a textbook.”

That stung. Adam tried not to let it sting, because he knew it was Ronan talking shit as usual, but it did.

“Fine, go then,” Adam said flatly.

Ronan was impossible like this. Adam was tired of it, and he’d tried to -- do something different, but now that it hadn’t worked he didn’t just want to keep fighting. He added, “I have a final in ten minutes. I don’t have time for this anyway.”

He almost regretted it when Ronan stilled, his expression going blank. Adam could not read it at all. He had a terrible sense of deja vu, staring at Ronan from across a table, neither of them saying what they really meant.

 _Ronan,_ he wanted to say, to stop it somehow. But he didn’t know what he would say next.

“Whatever,” said Ronan. “Fuck you, Parrish.”

He left, and Adam watched him go with the sinking feeling that nothing had really changed between them after all.

-

After finals, Adam drifted through the rest of the day in a daze.

He returned his textbooks. Talked to Gansey. Talked to his classmates. Went to his job. Talked to his boss. But as Adam left the garage and began the drive back to St. Agnes, the part of his brain that wasn’t trying to cope with the gradually dawning reality of winter break -- no more school, no more tests or grades that really mattered -- was preoccupied with his talk with Ronan.

His fight with Ronan.

He had tried for once in his life not to fight with Ronan, and they had fought anyway. He knew that in a day or so Ronan would drop by St. Agnes like nothing had happened at all, but somehow that made it worse. The fight hadn’t even mattered. It hadn’t changed anything.

Maybe Adam had been asking too much when he’d asked Ronan to tell him about what was wrong, though. They didn’t _do_ heartfelt conversations about their feelings.

It was the reason they’d worked so well before. Adam and Ronan and their relationship might have been strange and complicated in a thousand other ways, but these things -- grief, comfort, trauma, anger, happiness -- were simple with them. Simpler. Adam’s emotional baggage wasn’t involved in this, didn’t take up room and fester in the way it did with Gansey and Blue. And Adam had never wanted or expected Ronan to bring his either, before today.

The thing was, though, Adam knew maybe-dating was probably supposed to mean talking. He was pretty sure it didn’t mean this. But he didn’t know how to start, and he didn’t know if they could.

Judging from their fight, Ronan clearly wouldn’t welcome that kind of change, anyway. Ronan hadn’t wanted to answer Adam at all.

Adam arrived outside St. Agnes and parked his car. He closed his eyes for a moment, exhausted. Normally, this was when he’d go over in his head all the things he still needed to do for the day, but today he found he didn’t need to.

It was too quiet.

Adam swallowed, an odd empty feeling growing in the pit of his stomach that wasn’t quite hunger. His mind was buzzing with white noise. He thought about Ronan saying, _it’s too fucking quiet around here._ He wondered if it was this quiet at the Barns. He wondered how Ronan was doing. Ronan…

Ronan had sought Adam out today, had actually set foot in school for it, and Adam had never even found out the real reason why.

No. Enough was enough.

Adam was going to the Barns.

Ever since everything with Aurora and the demon and Cabeswater, Adam hadn’t visited the Barns. He’d wanted to sometimes: he had grown to love the place, in a rosy wistful way that rendered it even more abstract and dreamlike in his mind. But Ronan hadn’t asked him to come, and Adam wasn’t sure if it would be right, now. He thought Ronan would want the space to himself, to grieve and remember.

But if he didn’t find Ronan now, Adam would be stuck here spiraling into his thoughts, caught in this state of uncertainty. With renewed determination, Adam decided: he’d go back to his room, drop off his bag and change, and then he’d drive down to the Barns to see Ronan and figure out why Ronan had visited him that morning, and they could try to get in sync again.

It felt better to set a task for himself, to say it like this in his head. He’d identified a problem and a course of action, so now he could go and fix it. With that in mind, Adam grabbed his backpack and headed for his apartment.

-

But when Adam left the church five minutes later, Ronan was near Adam’s car, his BMW parked next to him, kicking at a spot on the ground.

Adam could hardly process it. That Ronan would come to St. Agnes _now_ \-- right after Adam’s newfound resolve to go to the Barns -- seemed just as improbable as his appearance at school that morning.

Adam made his way down apprehensively, though everything he’d been planning to say had flown from his head. As he got closer, Ronan didn’t move, or give any indication that he’d noticed Adam.

“Ronan --”

“I’m sorry,” Ronan said abruptly, still looking at the ground.

Adam stared at him. He was pretty certain he’d never heard Ronan apologize, and especially not over a stupid fight.

Ronan swore. He looked up, and Adam nearly flinched. There was something terribly young and uncertain in his eyes that shouldn’t have been there. He said, very low, “I don’t want to fuck this up.”

Adam’s heart sank. “You’re not going to -- I don’t care if we fight,” he said helplessly, guilt crawling up his throat. It wasn’t fair. Ronan had been a jerk, but he’d been upset and they’d had a thousand fights like this anyway, and he shouldn’t have to worry about this on top of everything else. “I just wish I could help you. I hate not being able to do anything to help.”

Ronan said nothing, his eyes dark.

“I wish you would talk to me,” Adam whispered. “I know we don’t usually talk about these things but I don’t know how to do this. I’m sorry.”

He was sorry that he didn’t know what to do. That things were like this. He was sorry about Aurora unmade and Gansey slumping in Blue’s arms and his own hands around Ronan’s throat, and he was sorry that Cabeswater was gone and so was his power.

He realized, distantly, that his hands were shaking.

There had been moments, before, when Adam had watched Ronan asleep on his bed, that he had thought it would be okay someday. Even without trying to breach this gap. Now he was helplessly trying and he didn’t know if it would work at all. He was sorry because he had suddenly never felt so lost before.

“Shit,” said Ronan, and pulled Adam into a hug.

It was incredibly awkward. Adam hadn’t anticipated it, and for a moment he stayed frozen in Ronan’s arms. Ronan’s hands hovered a bit on Adam’s back initially, as though he was unsure about whether to set them down. But the jarring feeling of it was what made Adam come back to himself a bit, and he finally relaxed and rested his head on Ronan’s shoulder.

It was like the stress of the past few weeks had dropped on him all at once, right in front of Ronan. It was a bit embarrassing, and Adam wanted to say that he was the one who was supposed to be comforting Ronan, not the other way around.

But to his horror, he realized that if he tried to say anything he was probably going to cry.

Maybe Ronan had been right about Adam pretending things were fine, after all. It was what Adam did; he studied and worked and took refuge in the uncomplicated, straightforward sort of stress he was used to, where effort yielded results and the path was very clear.

Nothing with Ronan was clear. But this was what was real.

Adam breathed out against Ronan’s shoulder and let his eyes fall shut.

They stayed like that for a while. It was nice. Adam eventually opened his eyes and let himself space out a bit, watching his breath come out in puffs against the cool air.

Finally Ronan said, “You know it wasn’t your fault, right?”

“Hmm?”

“All the demon shit. You don’t… have to feel bad about it.”

“It’s not that.” Adam pushed away gently, relieved that his voice was steady, and Ronan let go. He looked at Ronan. “I know it’s not my fault. Logically. I mean, I still -- I still think about it, but it’s mostly not about that. It’s about you.” He thought about the trapped look on Ronan’s face that morning, veiled by fury, and said, “I would’ve gone with you this morning, if you’d asked.”

“You would’ve missed your fucking final.” Ridiculously, Ronan sounded a bit enraged about it. Adam shrugged, amused.

“I could’ve made it up later anyway. I’m pretty sure.” Adam thought about saying something incredibly sappy and obvious, like how Ronan was more important than any test, but he decided against it. Instead he asked, like he’d wanted to, “Why did you come to school this morning?”

Ronan scowled. “I wanted to see you.”

Adam said, “Oh.”

“God,” said Ronan. “Don’t look like that. You were right, today was shit and there -- there was something wrong and I don’t know why.”

He looked away. He appeared to have been jolted into speech; maybe it was because Adam had practically begged him to talk, before. But it seemed very difficult for him to get the next words out nonetheless. “I had a nightmare,” he said, subdued. “It shouldn’t have been -- it was normal. I didn’t even take any shit back out. But I woke up in my room and it was so fucking silent and I kept thinking about -- about Mom and Dad. And suddenly I couldn’t be in there anymore, because they were gone and I kept looking at all of Dad’s shit that was still in the house. So.” Ronan shrugged, his eyes veiled and dark. “I went to see you.”

Adam didn’t say anything, but he carefully placed his hand on Ronan’s, whose knuckles were white at his sides. Ronan sighed and leaned into Adam a bit, an echo of their embrace from before.

“It feels like something’s… ending,” said Ronan. “Everything’s over, but I don’t know how to go on. Act like things are normal, I guess. And I wish I could because there’s you, and you, you like me for some reason and it’s fucking embarrassing that you’re watching me mope around and get pissed off all the time --”

“I’m not going to stop liking you,” Adam said quickly, “just because we fight, or because you needed space --“

“I know that,” said Ronan, and he sounded a little tentative about it, but it warmed Adam anyway.

“Good. And you don’t have to make yourself act normal, or pretend, if you still need time.”

“Yeah, okay,” Ronan said, and only rolled his eyes a little bit. Adam counted it as a success. “I just… hate that I can’t even stand to be in my own house right now. I fucking hate everything. I wish I didn’t have to care. I wish I could forget.”

“I don’t think you should forget.”

Adam thought about Ronan in the Barns, waking up to a world of preserved dreams -- the relics of a dead dreamer, a lost childhood -- and his heart hurt. But Ronan had his own dreams, too.

Adam said, “You were trying to wake the cows. Your father’s animals. I think you should keep doing that.”

Ronan turned to look at him.

“But Cabeswater’s gone,” he said. “And so’s my…”

He trailed off, but Adam understood. Ronan had told Adam before, after all: he had been trying to wake the animals for Aurora, so she could come and go whenever she pleased, and now that was pointless.

“You’re still the dreamer,” said Adam. “I think you should keep trying to figure it out anyway. You’re the only one who can. And besides, there’s still --”

“There’s still Matthew,” Ronan said, roughly, and Adam nodded.

If Ronan awoke the sleeping things, Adam didn’t know what would happen next, but it felt right to Adam. He thought it was something worth doing, on its own.

And maybe, if Ronan didn’t know how to go on, having something to do would help Ronan get through it.

He remembered the look of purpose in Ronan’s eyes as he bent over the cow, feeling the tiny shifts in its heartbeat. Somehow it had suited him, that sort of intent focus, though it seemed like it shouldn’t have. Ronan giving Adam a task, and then persistently setting out to complete his own, going to the Barns for hours a day to dream and dream and dream --

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Ronan said warily.

Adam blinked. “I -- I want to kiss you,” he blurted out, a bit flustered to realize as he said it that it was true. A day for honesty. Why not. “But I don’t know if I should, right now.”

Ronan looked startled. He flushed.

“You can kiss me whenever you want,” he muttered, after a moment. “Because we’re -- you know.”

“We’re what?” said Adam.

It was what he’d been thinking about, guiltily, just before Ronan had come to the Latin classroom that morning. He wanted badly to know what Ronan thought they were.

The flush crept higher up Ronan’s neck, and he gestured vaguely between them, avoiding Adam’s eyes. “… You know,” Ronan mumbled. “Boyfriends, I guess. If you want.”

It was barely audible, but the thrill that went through Adam at the word was downright embarrassing. “That’s -- well --” His face went as hot as Ronan’s. “Well, yeah, of course,” he said, breathless, and immediately wanted the ground to open up and swallow him whole.

“Okay,” Ronan said, still not looking at Adam.

“Okay,” Adam said quickly. “Yeah. Okay. Uh. Great talk.” God, that was worse. “Sorry, I’ll just --”

Adam gave up. He reached out and curved his hand into Ronan’s cheek, feeling the heat there. He leaned in and kissed Ronan on the mouth. He meant it to be quick, but Ronan’s mouth parted sweetly and easily over his, and he lingered, losing himself in it. He could never quite seem to contain himself perfectly, with Ronan.

Adam’s face was still warm when he finally pulled back. As Ronan’s eyes fluttered open and slowly came to focus on him again, Adam felt a strange ache in his chest.

It was the kiss, probably, and Ronan calling them boyfriends, and the vulnerability in Ronan’s expression now, and winter break setting in, but he wanted to -- he didn’t know. He didn’t know what he wanted right now, really, except Ronan. He felt at once lighter and weighed down with it, as though his heart had been hollowed out.

“Stay with me?” said Adam, low.

It took Ronan a while to respond. “I can’t leave Opal at the Barns for too long,” he said. “I didn’t tell her I would be gone this morning. I have to go back.”

“You said you didn’t want to be there today,” Adam said quietly.

“Yeah.”

“You don’t have to stay there. You can pick Opal up and bring her here for tonight, if you want.”

But Ronan shook his head. “I won’t fucking unleash her onto your room. And… I can’t hide from that shit, I have to go back eventually.” He gave Adam a sort of half-smile for the first time that day, though his downcast eyes belied his dread. “To try and wake the animals.”

And Adam looked at Ronan, standing there exhausted and grieving but resolute, and he thought, _I love you._

He thought he had known it since the day Ronan kissed him in the Barns; maybe a part of him had known it all along. But it was the first time he let himself feel it so clearly that he was almost overcome, that he wanted to say it aloud.

He didn’t.

It felt like forgiveness, anyway. That Adam Parrish, the dusty boy who had once thought there was monster blood in his heart, loved Ronan and knew it and was glad it was so. It felt like the start of something new.

“Okay,” said Adam. “But come to my room. Just for a while.”

So Adam brought Ronan up to his shitty room above the church and kissed him again, and there they stayed until the evening began to come.

-

Later, as the sky outside trickled past sunset into darkness and Ronan was ready to leave, Adam finally asked to come with Ronan to the Barns.

He was still a bit uncertain about asking, even though today had clarified a few things. In some ways it still felt like an intrusion, like it should be Ronan’s space to mourn, now that he was the last Lynch in Henrietta. But neither of them wanted to be alone tonight, and they both knew it. They didn’t say it, but that understanding was heavy in the air, and Adam felt that something had finally clicked into place between them again.

Ronan nodded, wordlessly, and they went downstairs, and went toward Ronan’s car without a sound. As Ronan looked at Adam and Adam looked at Ronan under the evening shadows, Adam kept it with him, that simple tender thought from before.

_I love you._

Someday he would say it. Soon. When things didn’t feel so uncertain and ephemeral, when he and Ronan were more settled in their lives. When they were -- happier, maybe, or more sure that they’d survived in the aftermath, that their wounds had begun to heal. But for today, he would go with Ronan to spend a night at the Barns, and they could figure it out from there.

“Let’s go, then,” said Adam, and got in the car.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!


End file.
